ORLANDO, Fla. (KY3) – Crews from Springfield City Utilities have been hard at work helping restore power for Florida residents after Hurricane Milton.
The crew of linemen left Springfield on Monday after some had just returned on Saturday from mutual aid assistance following Hurricane Helene in South Carolina. The crew assisted the Orlando Utilities Commission with power restoration efforts.
“As far as here, we’ve just seen really small, minor stuff, Poles, leaning, services broke,” said Keith Kubik, who responded to both hurricanes.
Kubik says he and the crew have been overwhelmed by the thanks they have received from Floridians.
“I’m overwhelmed with all the people that actually come outside and scream and holler to us, and, you know, give us a thumbs up and blow us kisses and all that stuff. And of course, we’ve seen signs around town with, I love linemen, and thank you, linemen,” said Kubik.
Orange County, Florida, resident Mike Derenthal says he’s appreciative of the guys coming all the way from Missouri to help.
“It’s like here comes the cavalry! Those guys came down in six trucks or so, and, yeah, it just felt fantastic to have states across the country show up. It’s good to see the systems in place that you can mobilize and put resources where you need to and help people out,” said Derenthal.
The CU crew got to Florida Wednesday morning and waited out the storm before starting mutual aid Thursday afternoon. On Thursday, they worked to get power back on and ran into routine outages they could fix. That continued through Saturday.
Now, the crew is working in areas with more damage.
“We’ve got some poles to change out, wires to put up in several places. And so we just continue to do that and continue to put people’s lives back on,” said Chris Bell, a City Utilities crew supervisor.
As of Saturday afternoon, the number of Floridians still without power had dropped to less than 1.4 million, according to poweroutage.us.
Milton killed at least 10 people when it tore across central Florida, flooding barrier islands, ripping the roof off the Tampa Bay Rays ′ baseball stadium, and spawning deadly tornadoes.
Officials say the toll could have been worse if not for the widespread evacuations.
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